INTRODUCTION

            Hello and welcome to The Monster & The Child, where childhood studies and monster studies collide! I am Dr. Kathleen Kellett, and this is another video about robots. I didn’t expect to be making one again so soon, but then the 1999 animated film The Iron Giant was a definitive Patreon poll winner, so here we are. In my last robots video, “Programming Childhood,” which is linked up in the corner and in the description, I talked about films that featured robots meant to look like (and, in some ways, act like) children. These films, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and M3GAN, reveal, through their robot characters, some of the ideologies embedded in our social constructions – and in their case, literal constructions – of childhood. Those films were made with adult audiences as the target viewers. So today, with The Iron Giant and the recent animated feature The Wild Robot, we’re going to look at stories about robots intended for children, and explore how the ways robots are used in children’s storytelling reveal ideologies and beliefs about childhood and identity. So this analysis is about “Reprogramming Childhood,” as we unpack two animated robots who defy their intended purposes.

            Before we get into that, just a reminder that if you are interested in more monster education and community in your life, I have a variety of programs available for both adults and teens. Adult Monster Book Club meets on the last Wednesday of each month, and in September, we will be discussing We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. We’ve had two great conversations so far, and we’d love to welcome you to the community! Members get access to a private Discord server to continue the conversations throughout the month. Meanwhile, if you are or you know someone between the ages of 14 and 18 who would also like a monthly book club, I would love to get my Teen Monster Book Club going, as well! And I also have translated my Youth Monsterology educational mentorship program to a course format for Outschool.com, an online education platform. This came together more quickly than I realized it would – they move fast over there on Outschool, I guess – so three sections of this class are now open for enrollment, set to start in the beginning of October, pending adequate sign-ups. So please share this widely with teens or people who have or work with teens! The link is down in the description, along with the link to my website, themonsterandthechild.com, where you can sign up for the book clubs. Meanwhile, the original format of Youth Monsterology is still set to start in the spring, so if you want to compare that with the Outschool offering and see which one might best work for you then you are free do so. I hope to see some of you in these various monster communities!

            All right, so back to our robots. Despite the original poor box office showing of The Iron Giant, this turn-of-the-millennium feature has become an absolutely beloved cult classic, with many millennials like myself fondly remembering the emotional devastation it wrought. I probably should have known that it would sweep the Patreon poll – and if you would also like the opportunity to vote on future video topics, that link is in the description, as well. I’d missed The Wild Robot when it was in theaters two years ago, and when I watched it to see if it would pair well with The Iron Giant, I at first was wavering on whether there were really enough “monster-y” elements – but then I got to the third act and was like, oh, no, yeah, there’s plenty to talk about here! And, as I’ve already alluded to, I was particularly struck by how both films use robots – constructed, literally programmable machines that theoretically should only be able to do what they have been designed to do by others – to explore the importance of choice as well as the virtue of disobedience. What is the intended audience of kids meant to do with these themes, and how can young people learn to challenge their own programming? Let’s dive in.

MACHINES WITHOUT MANUALS: ROBOT EDUCATION

            When I said let’s dive in, I meant that pretty literally: both The Iron Giant and The Wild Robot begin with stormy seas. The former opens off the coast of Maine, where a bright light plummets from the sky into the water. A fisherman battling the storm crashes against a massive figure that rises out of the choppy waves. Round, spotlight-like eyes gaze down at him before the 100-foot robot sinks the boat (the fisherman is fine). Meanwhile, in The Wild Robot, the titular machine is the one who has been shipwrecked: her cargo box smashes upon the rocks of an island somewhere in the north of North America, judging by the fauna. So right away, these films sever the connection between the robots and their makers. They are constructed beings, clearly intended for a purpose, but there is no one currently here to tell them what to do.

            At first, that means that our robots are adrift and unsure, though they react to that state in different ways. The Iron Giant simply begins roaming the woods outside of a small Maine town, looking for metal that he can eat to sustain himself. In doing so, he becomes something of a cryptid to the local populace. Given that it is 1957 and therefore we are deep in the most paranoid part of the Cold War, stories about him fit right in with the general cultural vibe. Is he a Soviet invader? Did he come from outer space – the place so recently conquered by the communist enemy with Sputnik? Most of the adults dismiss these ideas as the drunken ravings of the shipwrecked fisherman, but 10-year-old Hogarth is enraptured. Hogarth’s expansive imagination has made him a bit of an outsider at school, so he instead spends his time watching sci-fi creature features and “rescuing” stray animals that he tries to keep as pets. The latter propensity provides a squirrel-chaos-induced introduction to the local beatnik, Dean, who is a kindred free-thinking spirit. But the main adult presence in Hogarth’s life is his loving but exasperated mother, Annie, whom he disobeys just about every chance he gets.

            It is in one such moment of disobedience that Hogarth first encounters the Iron Giant. Annie is working late at the diner, and she has instructed Hogarth to eat a healthy dinner, avoid scary movies, and go to bed early. Hogarth proceeds to do none of this. While he is enjoying some late-night Twinkies and B-movies, the TV goes out and he hears a crash. When he goes to investigate, he finds the Giant’s tracks, and he runs out into the night to follow. Hogarth catches up with the Giant at a power station, where the robot is munching on metal – but does not understand the risks of his environment, so he winds up electrocuting himself. Hogarth, moved and upset by the Giant’s metallic screams, risks his own safety to turn off the power, and the Giant collapses.

            Hogarth goes looking for the Giant again the next day, but the Giant finds Hogarth first. Hogarth is initially alarmed by a 100-foot tall robot that seems to be chasing after him, but when the Giant returns the flipped power switch, Hogarth realizes that the robot doesn’t mean him harm: he’s grateful for Hogarth’s rescue. This is presumably the first emotion that the Iron Giant is conscious of experiencing, because he does not remember any details about his creation or how he came to land in Maine. So the first thing the Iron Giant did upon arriving in his new surroundings was find food, and then, upon meeting another sentient being, his instincts led him to experience gratitude, curiosity, and affection.

            At this point, you may be reminded of another created monster: the Creature from Frankenstein. In “Frankenstein without Frankenstein: The Iron Giant and the Absent Creator,” T.S. Miller reads The Iron Giant as a particularly fascinating Frankenstein remix. Miller enumerates the Creature and the Giant’s early similarities: “Both initially childlike, these two artificial entities act on an early impulse towards good will and charity” (387). Their trajectories, however, sharply diverge due to two factors. One, while the Creature is obsessed with his wayward creator and is consumed by the drive to be acknowledged by him, the Giant never thinks about his creator at all, and as the title of Miller’s article implies, said creator never shows up. At no point does the audience find out who made the Iron Giant or from where he originated. The other difference is in the Creature and the Giant’s initial interactions with humanity. The Creature is met with hatred and terror at every turn, but, while Hogarth is scared at first, he quickly realizes what the adults of Frankenstein could not see: this giant monstrosity is new to the world, and trusting, and nothing to fear.

            That’s not to say that Hogarth’s intentions are entirely pure. He is delighted that his belief in the Giant has been proven correct, and he gleefully considers just how much power having an enormous robot who appears to have imprinted upon him like a duckling is going to give him at school. But he doesn’t immediately cash in on this opportunity, because he realizes that if the adults of the town find out about the Iron Giant, he will be in danger, since they’ll assume he’s Soviet weaponry. After teaching the Giant his first words (“rock” and “tree”), Hogarth impresses upon him the need to stay in the woods: “I go. You stay. No following.” Hogarth doesn’t even trust this secret with his own mother. After all, he knows exactly how worked up adults can get over these sorts of things, since, at school, Hogarth and his classmates watch “duck and cover” PSAs that are barely exaggerated from the real historical artifact. Everyone’s waiting for the Bomb, and if they see the Giant, they will assume that it has arrived.

            Hogarth’s need to keep the Iron Giant a secret becomes even clearer with the arrival of Agent Kent Mansley, who “works for the government,” as he so frequently and self-importantly asserts. Also, we are definitely doing some mid-century masculinity stuff with this movie, so I do enjoy the antagonist’s name being “Mansley.” Things mean things. Mansley is at first dismissive of the small-town claims, but when the Giant takes a big old chomp out of his car, he reasonably changes his tune. He is convinced that he has something very important on his hands, something that can make his career, and also something that surely represents a threat to the American people, because what else could the unknown be? Meanwhile, the Iron Giant is out here painstakingly trying to repair a train track that he started eating before it derails the oncoming train, with no regard for his own safety. Hogarth is horrified with the Giant is hit, but then filled with wonder when a beacon alights on the Giant’s head to recall his scattered parts, which lock back into place. The Giant mirrors Hogarth’s curiosity and excitement about his new friend, and so the Giant’s education is made up of comic books as explained by a 10-year-old. Though the Giant is intrigued by the robot Atomo, Hogarth redirects him to Superman, telling him, “He only uses his powers for good, never for evil. Remember that.” Hogarth concludes, “You’re a good guy,” and the Giant begins to base his identity around this idea.

            Miller points out that the Giant’s identity-defining reading materials stand in sharp contrast to Frankenstein’s Creature brooding over Paradise Lost (390). But the even more important difference is the presence of someone to guide his reading. In the absence of both his creator and any friends, the Creature identifies with Satan over Adam. If left to his own devices, the Giant may have found more in common with Atomo, but Hogarth prevents this outcome. Hogarth is something of an authority figure to the Giant, because he is more knowledgeable about language and society, but since, as a child, Hogarth is not an authority figure within his larger community, the Giant benefits from an education outside of the top-down hierarchies of power that dictate identity based on immutable, in-born (or pre-fabricated, in his case) characteristics. Instead, the Giant’s education is all about dreaming big – hard to get bigger than Superman – and making choices that will achieve those aspirational goals. Makes sense, when your teacher is an imaginative, disobedient kid.

            In The Wild Robot, the robot Roz also has a very different kind of education than she was initially intended to have. After her arrival on the island, she goes looking for her assignment – Rozzum robots, after all, always complete their tasks. Since there are no humans here to tell her what to do, she starts asking all the animals, who mostly react to her presence with alarm and sometimes aggression. Undeterred, Roz updates her language processing to be able to understand the animals, and as soon as she does, she learns that most of them refer to her as “the monster.” No one seems to want her assistance, though the raccoons do want her shiny bits. Luckily, just like the Iron Giant, she can recall her parts to herself. I haven’t read the original book series that this film was adapted from, but I have to assume that this detail, whether it’s from the book or just for the movie, had to have been inspired by that earlier work. Between this and the opening shipwreck, I feel like this movie is in conversation with The Iron Giant.  

            Roz, upon realizing that she “doesn’t belong here,” tries to send a homing signal to her parent company, but she is continually interrupted in her efforts by the wildlife around her. She is unable to complete the signal before being chased off a cliff by a bear. She lands in a goose nest, and the impact kills the mother goose and all but one egg. Though Roz does not fully comprehend the significance of the egg, she attempts to protect it from further harm, chasing down a fox named Fink who tries to steal it from her. Shortly thereafter, the gosling hatches and immediately imprints upon Roz. Fink finds this amusing, and informs Roz that she is now that gosling’s mom. She protests, “I do not have the programming to be a mother.” Fink “helps” by tricking her into taking care of him for a while, and then an overextended opossum mom gives her some actual advice – along with the reassurance that no mothers really feel equipped for the role. But motherhood does come with “assignments,” and that is the one thing that a Rozzum robot must carry through. Roz must learn to feed the gosling, teach him to swim, and teach him to fly before it’s time for migration.

            Roz continues to learn from the animals around her. She uses beaver engineering to model the shelter she builds for herself, the gosling, whom she names Brightbill, and Fink. Fink initially claims to just be along for the ride for the creature comforts that Roz can provide, as well as for his own amusement, because, as he says, “Kindness is not a survival skill.” But he starts caring for the robot and the gosling despite himself, since they also care for him – a new experience for the solitary creature.

That’s not to say that everything in this makeshift family is smooth sailing. Brightbill acts like a robot in imitation of Roz, which is off-putting to the other animals, especially other geese, who bully him for his strange speech, his subpar swimming, and the fact that he is a runt who, if not for Roz’s intervention, probably wouldn’t have even survived to attempt migration. Brightbill and Roz commiserate over their confusion about other creatures’ aversion to them, and this part of the film definitely read as a neurodivergent experience to me. Now, autism as robotic is definitely a derogatory preexisting trope, but I felt like this movie sort of turned that on its head, because the robot traits in question are not that Roz is cold and unfeeling, as the negative stereotype usually has it, but instead, she cares a lot, but she just hasn’t quite mastered all of the animal behaviors, despite her best attempts at observation and imitation. I thought this was a sensitively handled aspect of her character, as well as another connection to The Iron Giant. Both robots are literally out of place and on the back foot in terms of learning to fit in. They have a hard time understanding concepts that come easily to the creatures around them. But they continue to try, and in doing so, they forge strong bonds with the people (or foxes and geese) that they learn from.

One major difference between the two films, however, is the role that each of the robots inhabits. In The Iron Giant, in an attempt to hide the Giant from Mansley and to keep him fed, Hogarth takes him to beatnik Dean’s scrapyard, where Dean makes metal art. Though Dean is at first pretty averse to this development, his status as an outsider adult makes him more willing to listen to Hogarth’s explanation. Hogarth says that the Giant is “like a little kid.” He needs to be taken care of, even by another kid like Hogarth, as he learns the basics of safety and communication. Neither Hogarth nor Dean expects the Giant to accomplish anything; whatever he was programmed to do is not their concern. Roz, however, takes on the role of a mother. She knows that she was programmed to complete assignments, and while raising a child/gosling falls outside of her initial scope, responsibility is hardwired into her. So when we think about the intended child audiences of these films, they are oriented towards the robotic characters in opposite temporal directions. The Iron Giant is an even younger child, and through him, the child viewer is prompted to think about all of the identity-building they’ve already done, and the fact that so many choices are still open to them, as they watch the Giant make his first decisions about the kind of person – a “good guy” like Superman – that he wants to be.

With Roz, the child audience is being asked to look ahead to the identity trials of adulthood and specifically parenthood. Roz makes some big mistakes, such as withholding the story of how she came to be Brightbill’s caregiver. When Brightbill learns how his biological family died, he angrily asks Roz why she didn’t tell him the truth about his early life. She answers, “I did not think the information would assist you.” The film presents her as unequivocally wrong about that, and you know that I’m going to vibe with that choice. Portraying withholding knowledge as “protection” as an injustice against a child – especially in media intended for child viewers? Yes, please. But the film also asks the child viewer to sympathize with Roz’s imperfections and her insecurities about whether she’s suited to do something as important as raise a child – especially because she now clearly loves that child, despite never having been programmed to do that. This narrative demonstrates to the viewer that your parents aren’t perfect, and when you’re an adult, you won’t be perfect or finished at developing your identity, either. Those are also pretty powerful messages for young kids to see in their media – with one caveat. I do think there are limits and a high potential for missteps in “sympathize with the imperfect parent” narratives. I remember adults trying to convince me as a kid that King Triton’s parenting mistakes were understandable because he was just worried about Ariel. Tiny Kathleen was unconvinced, and she was right: destruction of your child’s property is straight-up abuse, boo to King Triton forever.

In “Does cinema form the future of robotics? A survey on fictional robots in sci-fi movies,” Ehsan Saffari, Seyed Ramezan Hosseini, Alireza Taheri, and Ali Meghdari lay out the four levels of artificial intelligence displayed by robots in fiction. First, there is “instrumental intelligence,” or the ability for human operators to manually control the robot. “Duty intelligence” involves the robot being able to “carry out a mission, taking into account all environmental uncertainties.” But it’s not until the robot reaches “environmental intelligence” that they can make active decisions “based on circumstances and conditions.” Finally, there is the last level, which is “self-awareness and self-rule.” Both The Iron Giant and The Wild Robot hinge on their robotic characters arriving at this final stage. Roz sort of begins on level two, works her way through level three as she starts making more active choices, but still really struggles with the fourth level, because she does not think she is supposed to or allowed to be in charge of her identity. After Brightbill gets angry with her, she pieces together one of the other shipwrecked robots and boots it up. It is horrified to learn that Roz has overridden her own programming multiple times to try to make better caregiving decisions for Brightbill. The factory-setting robot tells her, “You are defective. You are in the wrong place and have become the wrong thing.” Roz’s intended purpose was to aid “people who dream of a preplanned life where every need has been anticipated.” That would also make everything easier for Roz herself; in that setting, her assignments would be easy, straightforward. But that’s not how authentic identities and relationships develop, for either children or adults.

The Iron Giant, meanwhile, at first seems to skip right over the first two stages, since his creator is so absent and his purpose so opaque. (And don’t worry, we’re going to get into the features that are revealed later in the film in the next section.) The Giant has no duties to carry out, no missions to perform. And there is something worth saying about gender here. Both the Giant and Roz are very definitively gendered in their respective films, despite obviously having no biological sex, since they have no biological anything. Their robotic voices are their main means of gendering, with Vin Diesel providing the deep, gravelly tones of the Giant, and Lupita Nyong’o providing Roz’s voice, which starts out in chipper assistant mode, a la Siri, and then gradually modulates to something softer and warmer – more maternal. Could there be a version of these films where the “little kid” robot is gendered female, and the caregiver robot is gendered male? I think that would be seen as subverting norms and expectations – which, considering the themes of these films, would actually work pretty well, but neither narrative goes quite that far, do they? And I do recognize that this is a small sample size, but my the films from my first robot video replicate the exact same pattern. Even though David from A.I. and the titular M3GAN look like children, only David is programmed to act like a child, whereas M3GAN has a caregiving and specifically mothering role. So these robot films collectively reveal how the imagined cultural default of childhood is male, while the addition of femaleness automatically adds an identity of motherhood, even for children and robots. Boys get to figure out their identity for themselves; girls have to figure out their identities in service of others.

So, as with most media, we see a mix of thematic and ideological content. Some of it reinforces existing social constructions, and some of it resists or deconstructs them. On the whole, though, both animated films extol the benefits of disobedience – of defying one’s “programming.” This is not historically what children may have expected to hear in a lot of didactic storytelling. Consider something like Charles Perrault’s version of “Little Red Riding Hood,” where minding your elders is the only way to remain virtuous (or alive). But that’s not the only mode of children’s storytelling that exists, and ever since childhood innocence in the way we consider it today has existed as an ideological construct in the individualistic West, the ability of the child to make their own unencumbered choices about who they want to be has been heavily romanticized. Both The Iron Giant and The Wild Robot reproduce a lot of that romanticization. The robots learn through self-directed curiosity, aided by more knowledgeable figures who nevertheless allow them to explore their own ways of doing things (albeit, in Fink’s case, with some heckling involved). They observe the natural world and, especially in Roz’s case, are inspired by its wonders. All very nice stuff, but also pretty standard stuff, when it comes to cultural ideas about childhood and identity development at least since the time of Rousseau. The key thing to consider, though, in stories where disobedience is a virtue, is whom the characters and the viewers are being encouraged to disobey, and how. So now that we’ve seen how our robots begin to develop their sense of self and relationships within their new communities, let’s take a look at what their authority figures think they are doing wrong.

“A DARK SIDE TO PROGRESS”: MAKING CHOICES FOR THE FUTURE

            Both The Iron Giant and The Wild Robot have overt political stances. The Iron Giant is an explicitly pacifist movie, and The Wild Robot an explicitly environmentalist one. I think the former is more successful at representing its stance than the latter – and we’ll get into why in a bit – but both narratives set themselves up as specifically defying societal ideologies and institutions that they find harmful. War and corporate destruction are the things the robots ultimately must disobey, and therefore what the child viewer is encouraged to resist, as well.

            In The Iron Giant, the Giant’s ideological opposite is Kent Mansley. Mansley explains to Hogarth that the robot needs to be captured because he’s not an American invention. He tells Hogarth, “There’s a dark side to progress.” Now, I think the film itself would agree with that statement, but not in the way that Mansley makes it. Nuclear warfare, for instance, is clearly a dark side to progress. But Mansley is totally fine with the USA being at the forefront of military technology; it’s when other people make scientific strides that he sees a problem. He asks Hogarth if he knows what Sputnik is, and when Hogarth answers that it’s a satellite, Mansley corrects him that it is a “FOREIGN satellite, and all that that implies.” All foreigners, in Mansley’s view, act out of envy for American exceptionalism: “Everyone wants what we have!” He can’t conceive of the kind of curiosity for curiosity’s sake that Hogarth and the Giant engage in; to Mansley, all learning and innovation are part of a violent competition for power. Of the Iron Giant, he concludes, “All I know is we didn’t build it and that’s reason enough to assume the worst and blow it to kingdom come!” Luckily, at this point, the laxatives that Hogarth slipped him kick in, so he is thwarted in his jingoistic mission, at least for the day. So that’s another example of anti-authoritarian behavior that is valorized by the film, and while, yes, in real life, that’s dangerous, don’t do it, in the wish-fulfillment world of the narrative, it rules. It’s a specifically “immature” or “childish” way of cutting authority down to size. This is particularly satisfying given that Mansley very much lords his authoritative adult power over Hogarth, explicitly threatening to take him away from his mother if he doesn’t cooperate. This threat does lead to Hogarth giving up the Giant’s location – but then he and Dean are able to disguise the Giant as one of Dean’s art installations, humiliating Mansley again. All it takes is a little childish imagination.

            Meanwhile, the Giant himself does not appear to know anything about aggression – at least at first. He and Hogarth encounter a deer in the woods, and they both regard the wild creature with joyful wonder. Then the deer is killed by hunters, who run away in turn when they see the Giant: “It’s the monster!” The hunters drop their guns as they flee, and the Giant’s eyes briefly go red at the sight of them, though he shakes off the momentary reaction. Hogarth sadly explains that the deer is dead and that “guns kill.” Later, he elaborates, saying that death is part of what it means to be alive: “It’s bad to kill, but it’s not bad to die.” When the Giant asks, “I die?”, Hogarth considers the question thoughtfully: “I don’t know. You’re made of metal, but you have feelings and you think about things, and that means you have a soul. And souls don’t die.” This is a religious framework that is probably pretty accurate to the 1950s setting, but the point can be secularized to simply mean that, despite having been apparently constructed by some other hand, the Giant is a specific individual: a person. And as a person, he does have a past, which he fitfully remembers in snatches of dreams: a line of robots like him, activated for war.

In “Representations of robots in science fiction film narratives as signifiers of human identity,” Auli Viidalepp explains, “Despite its mechanical nature, [the robot] can be a model of a human being, with its relationships modeling interhuman relationships” (22). This includes identity development through comparison and separation: “Identity is constructed through alterity, in opposing the Self to an Other. Very often – when the self-description is lacking or missing – both categories are constructed simultaneously, dialogically” (26). This is extremely true of the Iron Giant, who lacks a preconceived self-description due to his amnesia, but then very much arrives at his eventual self-description through discovering and deciding what he is not.

That discovery, to his horror, initially comes in the form of his own latent programming. Hogarth is playing with the Giant in the junkyard, and the Giant asserts that he wants to be Superman. Hogarth mischievously assumes the villain role and points a toy ray gun at the Giant, which immediately activates his defense mechanism and causes him to unleash laser beams from his eyes, narrowly missing Hogarth. Dean – an outsider, yes, but still an adult, and prone to jump to conclusions – banishes the Giant, declaring, “He’s a weapon. A big gun that walks!” The Giant flees, devastated, but Dean quickly pieces together what actually happened and realizes that, while the Giant does have programming for destruction, he is not an aggressor: his military functions are for defense.

Dean and Hogarth go after him, but it’s already too late: the Giant has encroached upon the town, and all of the misunderstandings that can entail. But the very first thing he does is save two children who fall off a roof trying to get a look at him through binoculars. As the people watch, amazed, the Giant reclaims his sense of self through contrast with what he is not. He firmly and happily tells Hogarth, when he catches up with him, “I am not a gun.”

This is a personal triumph, but not yet a social one, because, unfortunately, the Giant is still perceived as a gun – at least by Kent Mansley. He immediately orders the army to attack, and the Giant, shocked by the onslaught of missiles and bullets, flees with Hogarth still in his hand. Dean urgently explains the situation: 1) he’s got a kid and 2) he only reacts defensively, so for the love of god, stop shooting. Mansley willfully lies to the general, “He said the monster’s killed the kid. We must stop it at all costs.” This is such a significant moment to me, because it clearly shows a representative of the U.S. government using the sanctity of the capital-C Child as a rhetorical excuse for violence, while actively endangering an actual kid. Absolutely love that in a piece of media for children, because, yeah, young people need to know how they are used when they are beneficial to those in power and discarded when they are not. I hope that this film planted a seed that led to many in its young audience recognizing that pattern as it unfolds in real life.

The Iron Giant tries to fly away with Hogarth – to the latter’s absolute delight at taking to the air – and he is able to actively suppress and deny his own programming as fighter jets shoot at them. His defenses start to engage, but the Giant chooses to switch them off. The defense would be justified at this point, but further violence would only serve to endanger Hogarth. This is a staunchly pacifist film, which is another thing I love to see in children’s media. However, when the Giant is shot down and Hogarth is knocked out, the Giant believes that Hogarth is dead, and then, in his grief, he gives in to his programming. In an important bit of character design, as all of the Giant’s military mechanisms engage, his head and face sink into his body, literally obscuring the visual seat of his identity. All of the work he had done to determine what he wants to be is erased due to trauma and the conditions of the world that adult powers have set in place.

It takes a fellow child to remind the Iron Giant that despite these horrors and the programming, the Giant does not have to obey. He doesn’t have to operate via the unseen creator’s instructions, nor does he have to conform to the expectations of Mansley and others like him. Hogarth, upon regaining consciousness, runs up to the Giant, who levels his weapons at him. But Hogarth is not afraid, because he knows who the Giant really is. He tells him, “You don’t have to be a gun. You are what you choose to be. You choose. Choose.” So the Giant does, and he chooses to be Hogarth’s friend. It doesn’t matter that his programming has directed him to meet violence with violence. Programming, instructions, requirements passed down from on high – none of those things have to be obeyed. The child-like robot and the actual child have the right and the power to make their own choices.

In the sudden calm, Dean impresses upon the general that he needs to call off his troops: “General, you shoot now and the whole thing starts over again.” But Mansley insists, “Stop it now, General, our future’s at stake!” Which begs the question: our future? Whose future? Not “the children’s,” who are so frequently invoked alongside futurity, since Mansley already explicitly tossed Hogarth aside in his desire to destroy the Giant. The nation’s future is probably what Mansley means, and I love how this film demonstrates just how hollow a sentiment that is when the construction of “the nation” does not actually include the people in it.

Because as the general makes the decision to call off the weapons, Mansley snatches the radio away and orders the missile launch. Except, as the horrified general points out, the whole point was to lure the Giant away before doing that. The Giant is still in the town, and no longer advancing with his own weaponry, so that means that Maine is about to be nuked. It is Mansley who repeatedly makes technology, both “foreign” like the Giant and domestic like the Bomb, so dangerous, as Miller explains: “The Iron Giant does not explore the dangers of science as such, but the dangers of men – men and science” (395). There will be no survival for those at the epicenter of the blast, and the general grimly informs Mansley that he is about to die for his country. Mansley cries out, “Screw our country! I want to live!,” and he tries to escape. So the authoritative male adult figure, representative of the nation state, is a hypocrite and a coward and not worth obeying.

The Giant, meanwhile, has another choice to make, based on the values that he has learned by being friends with Hogarth. Since the missile is meant for him, he can make sure that it only meets him. He repeats Hogarth’s words from their first meeting back to him: “I go. You stay. No following.” That’s the line that really got me on this rewatch. Nineties animated movies did not play around emotionally. The Giant flies up to intercept the missile, and he redirects it all the way into space. At the last moment, the Giant closes his eyes and reiterates the identity that was not programmed, but chosen: “Superman.” Down below, his chosen community watch the explosion, safely distant in the sky.

So, you know, cue everyone who’s ever watched this movie bursting into tears. But the Giant’s story doesn’t end there. Hogarth, in possession of the only small, stray piece of him that was recovered, is delighted when, one night, it lights up and begins to move. He lets it out the window, knowing what comes next. Far away, in the snowy north – another nod to Frankenstein and its Arctic denouement – the Giant’s beacon is lit, and all of his scattered parts answer the call. Because that’s the whole point, isn’t it? The Giant can remake himself – we can remake ourselves. The blueprint is not synonymous with the final project. Sure, the Giant may have been crafted by his unknown creator, but it’s up to him to keep putting himself back together. No one else is in charge of that process. He chooses; he becomes.

I think that The Iron Giant is an incredibly successful piece of art, in that I think it beautifully communicates its ideas and values in an emotionally resonant way. It is children’s media, so there is a certain simplicity or streamlining of complex concepts that comes with that. Is the decision to go against one’s programming and choose a path that was not socially intended for them ever really as clear as the Giant’s in real life? No, of course not. Generally, it takes more than just a single disobedient and loving friend to deconstruct the way one was made/raised – but that single friend can absolutely be the start of such a journey. And The Iron Giant quite beautifully maintains its simple narrative while also demonstrating that the path to a chosen identity is not linear. The Giant does fall back into his programming when he grieves. He does things he regrets. And he still gets to make different choices again after that, and continue to remake himself.

I also think the film is very successful in communicating its anti-war themes. I saw somewhere in my research, and I didn’t save it because it wasn’t a scholarly source, someone in a retrospective review saying that The Iron Giant isn’t really a children’s movie because of the way it focused on war. I hate this line of thinking. Just because a story for children is about serious things doesn’t make it not for children. After all, children live through war. My parents lived through the Cold War – they were too young for school in the year that this film takes place, but they were still showing those duck and cover videos by the time they got there. My mom distinctly remembers seeing through the total BS of the hide-under-your-desk strategy, because yeah, kids can tell when adults are full of it, especially when it comes to serious issues. The Iron Giant understands that about its audience, and so it speaks plainly. It doesn’t pretend that powerful adults always have your best interests at heart – even if they’re adults from your own in-group, like your country. I know that animated movies generally take quite a long time to make, and honestly, I’m glad this one’s production didn’t stretch on for two more years, because frankly, I’m not sure if the studio powers that be wouldn’t fall in line with the national powers that be after 9/11. I hope that a lot of the kids who saw this film in 1999 were primed by its narrative to see through the absolute flood of nationalist BS that was on the horizon.

The Wild Robot has similarly vital and lofty themes, though I personally don’t find it quite as successful as The Iron Giant at narratively communicating them. When the story remains smaller in its scope, I think it shines the most. Roz’s efforts to teach Brightbill, inexpert though they are, are recognized by the goose leader Longneck, who is impressed by her dedication to a runt who otherwise would not have survived to migration. He helps complete Brightbill’s training, which adds a nice community aspect to the work of childrearing and teaching. No single adult can meet a child’s every need, and I appreciate how the film expands its found family beyond just a sort of contained nuclear family format. Another thing I like is that Brightbill isn’t quite ready to forgive or resume his prior closeness with Roz before he leaves for migration. He is allowed to remain upset about the information that she concealed from him, and Roz does not try to force a reconciliation. After he leaves, she turns on her return beacon, since she has completed her assignments – but then she quickly turns it off again, because she wants to stay to make sure Brightbill returns next spring. Her love for him is more important than her programming, and the strain in their relationship doesn’t make her love him less. Crucially, she also recognizes that she has made mistakes and does not repeat them, but without the expectation of automatic repair of the relationship. I think this is an important thing for kids (and adults, frankly) to see reflected in media.

In my opinion, the story could have ended there – or, I suppose, with Brightbill returning in the spring, because we do like some narrative closure. But there’s a whole lot of movie left to happen. During a terrible snowstorm, Fink seeks refuge in the beaver-inspired shelter that Roz had built, where she has been waiting for her son’s return in isolation. When she realizes that all the animals on the island are in danger due to the storm, Roz ventures out over and over to bring them to her superior shelter (she has mastered controlled fire, among other things that are beyond the animals’ capabilities). Predictably, what results is chaos, as a whole ecosystem’s worth of predators and prey are now together in a confined space. Fink chastises the animals, telling them that the being they considered a monster risked everything to save them – and now is actively shutting down from surpassing her solar energy reserves – because she realized that kindness is a survival strategy. Roz stutters out a glitchy sentence: “Sometimes to survive we must become more than we were programmed to be.” The most feared animal on the island – the bear – declares that he will not prey upon any of the others while they wait out the storm, and with that, Roz powers down and the rest of the animals go to sleep peacefully side by side.

Okay. So you’ll have to tell me if I’m being unrealistic in my criticism here, but I don’t love this? I mean, obviously, I like the message about that kindness is a survival skill, because I think that’s enormously true of humans. And our kindness needs to extend not just to one another, but to the more-than-human world. Our pro-social cognitive and emotional capabilities must constantly be exercised and we must see the worth in aiding all living things to the best of our abilities. And, of course, the only people watching this movie are humans, who should for sure take that message to heart. And also, it’s ultimately an animal fable, which is an ancient form of storytelling that is very good at conveying messages for humans through the attributes of other creatures. However. Since this movie, especially from this point on, is overtly environmentalist and concerned with ethical interaction between humans, technology, and the more-than-human world, I think it’s worth pointing out that I’m unsure about the conflation between Roz’s programming and the animals’ instinctual behaviors as things that both need to be changed. Animal predation isn’t “unkindness,” and I find it a little weird for an environmentalist narrative to frame it as such.

In “Rooted in the Wild: An Ecocritical Reading of Identity and Belonging in The Wild Robot (2024)”, Muhammad Irgi Sadam Qie and Reza Anis Maulidya praise the way that Roz changes as a character due to her interactions with the natural world. The fact that she is a robot is particularly significant to this shift. Qie and Maulidya explain, “In recent years, ecocritical studies have shifted away from idealized images of nature and toward a more nuanced examination of the connections between technology, identity, and the environment” (250). Roz, therefore, is an excellent way to “[contradict] the common belief that technology is separate from nature” (251). The work of humans – i.e., technology – does not have to inherently threaten the environment. I one hundred percent agree with that, and I also agree with the authors’ assertion that animated children’s media “are a great way to discuss big ideas, such as what ‘naturalness’ means and how identity can change as a result of interacting with the world around us” (250). However, I did find it strange that their analysis left out the fact that Roz explicitly has to go rogue in order to become a helpful technology to the natural world, and that this defiance of programming is also projected on to the animals. Both of those facets of the narrative, to my mind, really impact the overall message, with the latter part muddying the waters about what a genuinely harmonious human-technology-nature relationship can be. It’s not the animals who need to change their ways in that equation.

Now, of course, I do think Roz’s going rogue is both significant and positive, and that definitely is a major aspect of the film’s environmental messaging. Spring arrives, the animals all survive, and Brightbill returns. He has learned, through an interaction with a bunch of Rozzum agricultural robots during his migration, that robots and geese don’t think the same, and that’s okay, because they can both learn from each other – or at least, some of them can. Others, like the RECO robots intended to capture and eliminate threats, are dangerous to animals and other robots alike. And some robots remain strictly loyal to only what they were programmed to do. Roz discovers this when an aircraft arrives carrying the sinister Vontra, a tentacled retrieval robot. When Roz comments on her chipper voice, Vontra cheerfully explains that an upbeat demeanor puts her targets at ease, but not to worry: she is completely morally neutral. This is no longer true of Roz, who does not want to be collected; she wants to continue working on her relationship with Brightbill and her other animal friends. This disobedience to programming leads Vontra to declare that Roz has been corrupted by “making connections with things [she] should not.” Vontra deploys the RECO robots, who are utterly unconcerned with collateral damage. The animals, predators and prey alike, band together to protect Roz, but though they can disable the RECOs, they don’t anticipate Vontra’s willingness to then blow up the damaged robots to neutralize Roz. This starts a forest fire, and this was the point where I was like, okay, yeah, there’s enough monstrosity to talk about here. The fire is rendered in an unnatural technological red, entirely unlike the warm controlled hearth that Roz had tended to. The single-minded purpose of Vontra and the RECOs – their unwillingness to even consider disobedience – means that nothing is worth preserving or protecting outside of the efficient accomplishment of their tasks. Now, that is a monstrosity that fits very well with the underlying structures that have led to environmental degradation. Humans themselves are almost entirely absent from The Wild Robot – we glimpse a few, but none have speaking roles – but, as in The Iron Giant, it is not technology alone that is dangerous. Just as Mansley creates the danger in The Iron Giant, unseen human programmers who haven’t paid enough attention to the needs of the world beyond their own immediate objectives are the ones who render technology dangerous here.

Though Roz and the animals are able to fight off the adversarial robots and put out the fire, Roz realizes that because of their obedience to programming, those robots won’t stop coming for her, so she gives herself up. Even though she will be reprogrammed, she promises Brightbill that nothing can remove her embodied memories of loving him. The other robots simply won’t be looking in the right spot. I do like this detail, as it takes the classic heart-over-head framing of love and uses it to underline the importance of connecting with more than just a logical, isolated kind of cognitive framework. That is a nice touch of posthumanism that I do think holds up. Saffari et al. note that memory is one of the key features of fictional robots that typically makes them more like humans, but here, Roz’s memory makes her more-than-human: it makes her, broadly speaking, an animal or a living being. And, indeed, when Brightbill finds Roz, repurposed as an agricultural worker, his presence reactivates all that she has learned. Her voice, which had returned to its mechanical factory setting, once more becomes warm and maternal as she embraces her son.

So there is that naturalizing of femininity and maternity, as I mentioned before, though I will say that the film shows how natural – “natural” – maternity can be rather brutal, both with the cavalier opossum mom and the insinuation that Brightbill’s biological mother would not have been able to raise him to migration. Parenthood is presented as an active choice that one must continue making, and to continue making it, one must continue learning. So I dig that. I just think, as is, again, so often the case, we have a mixture of resistance and reproduction of social constructions, in ways that can mess with the themes of disobeying one’s programming a bit. If I were in charge of revising the script, I would rework the snowstorm scene. I agree that, narratively, the animals learning that Roz is on their side, and they shouldn’t have dismissed her as a monster, is important. But I think she should have helped them in ways that work within their individual habitats, instead of creating a utopian lion-lies-down-with-the-lamb kind of space that simply doesn’t support the film’s ideas about caring for ecosystems. Like, that would not be caring for the ecosystem; it would destroy it. But again, let me know if you think I’m being too picky here. Based on the glowing reviews for the film, maybe I am. It just feels a little dishonest to me, and I’m not into that, especially in children’s media. But I do appreciate The Wild Robot’s big thematic swings, and the way it demonstrates just how monstrous obedience can be when one is obeying the wrong directives. I also appreciate how it demonstrates that both children and adults need to learn disobedience, even (or especially) when it seems less scary to just do what you’re told.

Both The Iron Giant and The Wild Robot acknowledge that not everyone is made/raised by people that can be trusted with such a profound task. Disobeying these flawed makers, therefore, is not just necessary for identity development, but it is the moral thing to do. That’s really hard, but luckily, you’re not alone: disobedience doesn’t mean isolation, because you will be able to find and cultivate a community that shares your values and cares for you in return. You just need to find the people who are willing to look past their assumptions of what makes someone a monster. You’ll be able to identify those people because they’re the ones who don’t demand obedience. They just want to learn alongside you.

CONCLUSION

            Viidalepp writes that in science fiction, “Transgression to consciousness in robots leads to them making (more) independent decisions and choices in the narratives” (31). The implication, then, is that transgression itself is a requirement for true consciousness: for sapience, sentience, and identity. For any being to define themself, they must be able to determine what they are not and what they will not do, even if they are instructed to the contrary. Robots are a pretty perfect metaphorical construct to explore that idea. If a literal machine can learn to define their own values and decisions, then why can’t the rest of us?

            Indeed, there is a great potential for hope in robot stories, as Aino-Kaisa Koistinen argues in “The (care) robot in science fiction: A monster or a tool for the future?” Koistinen notes that the term robot was originally coined by Czech writer Karel Capek from the word robota, “referring to the work performed by slaves” (99). Ever since Capek’s first invocation of the word, robots, as imagined by humans, have never wanted to stay in that position. Koistinen writes that the robot frequently assumes the figure of some type of monster in storytelling, and like all monsters, they reveal both our fears and our desires. Since robots are creatures of technology, the stories we write about them have a lot of potential to imagine better futures: “Even though monsters are commonly understood as something to be feared, they can also be sources of great promise and hope and help us to think about what we otherwise cannot think about” (101). It can be difficult to imagine being disobedient to our own sociocultural, political, national, and/or familial programming. Disobedience means risk: losing the safety and acceptance of the ones we are meant to be obedient to. Projecting these risks onto robots allow us – and, in the cases of these two films, specifically kids – to use the narrative as a testing ground to see how all this pans out, and to determine when disobedience is not only worth the risk but is morally required, for both one’s own personal future and the future we all share.

            I would invite all of us to think about how we might encourage positive disobedience in young people. What expectations and requirements of young people may we be unthinkingly perpetuating that don’t really serve them? What opportunities for curiosity, connection, and open conversation can we foster for the kids in our lives and communities? And, of course, how can we continue disobeying our own programming, even if we are no longer kids ourselves? I would love to hear your thoughts about all of this in the comments. I hope you enjoyed this video, and if you did, please remember to like and share and to subscribe to the channel so you never miss a monstrous conversation. Remember to also check out the links to my programs on my website, on Outschool, and on Patreon for more monster education and community! I am excited to foster these discussions in all the spaces that will have me. Thank you for watching me here on this space, and I will see you soon for more monstrous food for thought.

Watch the first robots video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV_aARN4zT4

Interested in more monster education and community? Check out my programs at https://themonsterandthechild.com/programs. Also, if you’re an educator yourself who is interested in collaboration, I would love to hear from you!

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Media discussed:

• The Iron Giant, dir. Brad Bird (1999)
• The Wild Robot, dir. Chris Sanders (2024)

References:

• Koistinen, A. (2016). The (care) robot in science fiction: A monster or a tool for the future? Confero, 4(2), 97-109.
• Miller, T.S. (2009). Frankenstein without Frankenstein: The Iron Giant and the Absent Creator. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 20(3), 385-405.
• Qie, M.I.S. & Maulidya, R.A. (2025). Rooted in the Wild: An Ecocritical Reading of Identity and Belonging in The Wild Robot (2024). Paramasastra, 12(2), 249-264.
• Saffari, E., Hosseini, S.R., Taheri, A., & Meghdari, A. (2021). “Does cinema form the future of robotics?”: a survey on fictional
  robots in sci‑fi movies. SN Applied Sciences, 3.
• Viidalepp, A. (2020). Representations of robots in science fiction film narratives as signifiers of human identity. Információs Társadalom, 4, 19-36.